


heirat

by tomatoes



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anchors, M/M, Marriage Proposal, an absolutely disgusting amount of em dashes, jon is a little bit dense as per ushe, the inherent romanticism of sharing an uncomfortable sleeping arrangement, this is not how getting married works but it's MY fic i make the laws
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23419675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatoes/pseuds/tomatoes
Summary: In the middle of it all, a brief, unfaltering moment of truth.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 51
Kudos: 233





	heirat

**Author's Note:**

> [and the old despair/that was often there/suddenly ceases to be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpupRdFUYzo)

It was, for the most part, good.

Well—things could have been _better_ , he supposed. Stumbling out of the Lonely, cold and damp and shaking, and immediately being approached by a harrowed-looking Basira was not good. Being told they'd have to drop everything and leave London because the commotion surrounding The Magnus Institute had finally drawn the concern of the public was not good. And finding out that apparently Daisy's closest still-functioning safehouse was a ten hour drive away in the hills of Scotland—

Well. Martin had perked up, mumbled something like _hear it's beautiful up there_ , and that was enough to soften Jon on that aspect, just a little bit.

Daisy's truck is huge and dark green and probably old enough to drive itself. They pry open the smaller back doors, and it takes Jon and Martin a combined seven minutes to figure out how to fold up the sideways-facing back seats so they can fit the luggage in there. The whole interior of the truck is dusty in a construction site sort of way, the thin layer of dirt blending in with the beige color of the cracked leather seats and plasticky dashboard. It's also higher off the ground than anything Jon's ever driven, which means he slows to approximately five miles per hour every time they make any sort of turn.

"Do you want me to drive?" Martin asks about two hours into their journey, clearly noticing that Jon has been white-knuckling his way through each hand-over-hand movement. "I had a CR-V when I lived out in Devon. I promise you we will not flip if you pull over."

"Ha ha," Jon says flatly, but he stops on the shoulder and they quickly switch sides before Martin starts them off again. "We'll switch again in another two hours."

"Alright, but if at that point we’re somewhere that has a lot of turns I'm not letting you drive."

Jon waves his hand at him in a noncommittal way, and Martin rolls his eyes before turning them back to the road. Jon looks out the passenger window, watching the metal dividers fly by in front of the grassy fields by the highway. They sit in silence, both of them clearly too tired to hold any sort of conversation, but instead of being awkward it's comfortable. Martin is a familiar presence, at once a reminder of a more stable past long gone and a piece of a safer future. A calmer future.

He lets his eyes go unfocused, and the field smears into a fuzzy blur of green, moving ever forwards. It's—good, Jon decides tentatively. This might be good.

—

When he first sees the cottage, Jon is unimpressed. It had been _Daisy's,_ he wasn't expecting it to be decked out in any way, but he hadn't expected it to look quite so plain. Perhaps the word "cottage" had pulled up more storybook visions in his head. Either way, the squat building with tiny windows felt less than homey to him. But Martin gasps, a quiet _oh_ escaping his lips, and moves to inspect a large rock that sits by the door of the house. Jon has to step closer to realize he’s admiring the moss growing over it, gentle fingers rubbing over the green like it’s a soft animal. "The plants are nice."

Jon can't think of anything else to say, so he gestures to the front door. "Should we check out the inside?"

"Sure," he mumbles, clearly distracted, so quiet it's almost a whisper. He turns to follow Jon into the house.

Daisy's cottage is tiny. The whitewashed stone on the outside matches the interior, revealing a mournful lack of insulation that Jon's natural low body temperature is already dreading. The small, sunken windows don't offer much in the way of light, but there's a working bare bulb hanging from the ceiling that illuminates the small room, and a few lamps scattered in the darker corners. There’s an attached bathroom, and upon checking the sink and shower the pipes appear to be working, if not a bit noisy. The fridge and cabinets in the cramped kitchenette are predictably empty, except for a handgun in the cupboard over the stove that makes Martin laugh in shock when he stumbles across it. "You'd think there'd be, like, a floorboard she'd pull up or something," he chuckles, placing it back.

The furniture is sparse and seems to consist of anything Daisy was able to fit in the truck to bring up—a well-loved couch, an IKEA table with a chip on one side, and quite a few rusted folding chairs stacked up in the corner that looked like they hadn't been touched since they were put there. And perhaps most out of place—an old box tv propped up on a dresser, plugged into an outlet that appears to be dangerously close to burning the whole place down. Jon turns it on experimentally, feels the prickle of static in the air as the screen comes to life. "TV works," Jon says, and Martin gasps from the kitchen.

"Wait—" he dashes back out to the truck and comes back with one of his backpacks. "I'm so glad there's a TV, I just didn't want to leave it behind but I'd have felt so dumb if we just had it lying around—" He upturns the contents onto the couch, and out tumbles a Gamecube and a few cartridges, bouncing gently on the cushions. Jon didn't have any consoles as a kid—video games had never interested him, and he wasn't sure his grandmother would have known how to set one up anyways. Still, he vaguely recognizes the games that now sit on the couch cushions, mostly from the small handful of birthday parties he’d begrudgingly attended in his youth. Martin is by the TV, fiddling with the AV cable. "Uh, Wind Waker, Luigi’s Mansion, Animal Crossing. If you like any of those," he says, and the ancient technology gives a quick snap of feedback as he plugs it in.

Jon laughs. "I never really played video games.”

“Don’t know why I didn’t guess that,” Martin looks back at him, smiling wide. "If you want to take a break from unpacking, I’ll show you my town? There’s gonna be a lot of weeds, be warned."

Jon smiles back. It's getting dark outside. The sun dips leisurely over the hills behind the house, and the TV illuminates the room. “I won’t hold it against you.”

They should probably get the rest of the bags out of the car, and the groceries into the fridge, and make sure the heat works. He sits down next to Martin anyway, back against the sofa.

—

The sun is fully set by the time they realize the safehouse only has one room.

“Hang on, wh—where’s the bed?” Jon asks, voice pitching up in confusion.

Martin looks around and comes to the same discovery Jon has—the only two doors in the house lead to the outside and the small bathroom. He saves and stands up to turn off the console, and Jon scans the room one more time for anything Daisy would have used to sleep on.

“I mean, maybe there’s an air mattress? Or she could have just slept on the couch—”

“Wait, yep,” Martin interjects. Before Jon can ask what he’s doing Martin is lifting the cushions on the right side, gesturing for him to grab the left. “Pull-out.” Jon’s brain catches up with the situation and he moves to help. They unfold the couch in its entirety, leaving them with a full-sized mattress that awkwardly juts out from between the couch’s armrests.

An uncountable amount of thoughts race through Jon’s head as they survey the dingy yellow memory foam rectangle in front of them, but all he can manage to vocalize is a flat “Huh.”

“Guess that explains these,” Martin responds, lifting the basket full of sheets and pillowcases that was sat next to the armrest. “Should probably set this up before we pass out. I mean, I don’t know if _your_ sleep schedule has upgraded to that of a regular human being, but I’m personally about to drop.”

“I could go another hour, probably.” Martin gives him a look and throws one of the pillowcases at him. They wrestle with the cushions and sheets, yanking the stretchy edges around the corners and shoving them under. When Jon flops back on the finished product, he can feel the metal bars press against his back. “Is this comfortable for you?”

Martin looks at him, shrugs briefly. “Nowhere else to really sleep, yeah?”

“I—God, this _sucks_ ,” Jon groans, approximately three years of emotion bubbling up at once. Martin laughs near-hysterically at his sudden outburst. The laughter turns quickly into a wobbly, unsteady smile which just as quickly turns back into a neutral expression. Jon presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, grimacing. He feels rather than sees Martin sit down on the mattress next to him. "I'm sorry," Jon mutters.

Martin sighs. He looks at the floor, toes the metal support bracket of the bed with his sneaker, sending reverberations through the mattress. “It’s alright.” He mumbles, falling backwards to lie next to Jon.

They lie like that for a moment, and Jon focuses on his breathing and his hands resting on his stomach and does not think about Martin, right next to him in a soft-looking shirt from some volunteer event, eyes closed behind his wire-frame glasses. Instead, he thinks about how he left his toothbrush in the truck and will have to brave the cold night to get it. He thinks about how he’ll have to get used to sleeping on a different pillow. He thinks about how the water will probably run brown when he first tries to use the sink.

He thinks about Martin.

Martin likes farmers’ markets and record players and his favorite color is a mustard yellow, which was the color of his phone case when Jon first met him at the Institute, and Jon decided he thoroughly hated the color, and then Jane Prentiss took his phone and he got a new phone and the new case was clear. Martin double-knots the laces on his three-eye docs when he wears them because when he only ties them once they come undone. Martin mentioned once at an office party that in a dream world he’d be a sort of well-known poet and have a cat and a dog and a vegetable garden, snap peas and bell peppers, and tomatoes in the summer to can for pasta sauce all year. “And maybe a husband,” he’d said jokingly, self-deprecatingly, drunk enough to bring up his love life in the harsh fluorescent glow of the break room. Tim had laughed and Sasha had smiled at Tim’s laugh and Jon had rolled his eyes and left a half hour later.

Martin on the bed next to him shifts. He’s playing a little game on his phone with the clear case. Jon watches as he closes it, stretches and starts to get up. “I need to get my duffel,” he says through a yawn. He trudges outside, and from where he’s lying Jon can watch him through the front door. He drags his bag from the back seat before leaning over into the front to grab something.

Jon sits up on the bed, rubbing his eyes, and when he looks up again Martin’s holding out his toothbrush.

“You left it in there,” he says, like that explains everything. Like that explains anything at all.

“Thank you,” Jon responds, because he can’t find any other words. He’s unsure if he’ll ever fully understand Martin Blackwood. Why he’s still here with him after all of it. But, he thinks as he brushes his teeth, he’s going to try.

—

The days pass lethargically. Jon’s resting heart rate feels as though it’s dropped to a crawl in comparison to the racing pace it’s been keeping up for months now. He cooks, he reads, he watches Martin write in the little Moleskine he brought up here. He watches Martin fade in and out sometimes, when he thinks Jon is too preoccupied to notice, and only then does his pulse begin to speed again.

It gets particularly bad some days, and is set off by seemingly nothing—tiny little cues that are invisible to Jon but will incapacitate Martin for the rest of the day. He's spent many hours on the couch with him, rubbing feeling back into his hands.

Which is not to say that Jon has not had the same problem, he supposes. He isn't starving yet, subsisting on the statements he'd brought up with them, but there have been times where he's felt _ravenous_. Times where Martin has pulled him back, stopped him from doing anything he'd later regret.

He has to do _something_ , he thinks one morning, worrying over the eggs on the stove. Martin is still asleep, form just visible over the back of the couch.

Jon glances out into the living-slash-bedroom, sees him roll over, pulling the duvet up around his head. He turns the kettle off before it can make enough noise to wake him.

Martin likes his eggs over easy with some sort of sweet-hot sauce, which Jon finds a bit odd, but he makes them that way before making his own scrambled for the same reason he helped Martin make space in the packed truck for the pothos plant he hadn’t wanted to leave in his flat, the same reason he pulled over at the little fruit stand on the way up here so he could buy pears. Jon cares about him, in whatever silly, human way allows him to still be vulnerable enough to care about anything so easy to lose.

He won’t lose Martin, though. He won’t.

He has to do _something._

The eggs continue to sizzle as Martin gets up, running his hands through his bedhead in a futile attempt to fix it. He notices Jon at the stove, and when he speaks his voice has a note of surprise. "Oh—you're cooking?" He turns to check if the kettle is still hot. Apparently, the water hasn’t cooled too much, because Jon hears him rustling through the tea bags behind him.

"Felt like it. Figured I'd make some for you, as well." They usually both make their own breakfast, but there have been a handful of mornings since they got to the safehouse when Jon insists on throwing together some sort of nicer meal for the both of them, more than the usual bowl of cereal or lone banana. This morning he’s daringly opened one of the packs of bacon they have in the fridge.

“Eggs and bacon?” Martin asks, sliding a mug of tea towards where Jon is working. He leans against the sink while he waits for his own to cool. “Luxurious. Give me the burned pieces.”

Jon huffs indignantly. “I’m not going to burn any of them. Unlike some less fortunate than I, I have not developed a compulsive fear of underdone foods due to service jobs.”

“I burn sausage _one time_ and you—”

“They come pre-cooked, Martin!” Jon emphasizes, but he’s laughing, and Martin is too.

“I’m just _saying,_ I like burnt bacon. Just leave some pieces on longer.”

Jon obliges, and then they sit and eat together at the little table where they’d put two of the uncomfortable folding chairs. The sun shines through one of the tiny windows, casting a beam of light between them. He watches dust particles float by Martin’s face as he finishes his eggs and gets up to take their plates to the sink.

Right now, he doesn't look like someone who'd be swallowed up by an infinite, rolling fog. He looks like a person. A regular person, untouched by all of this, having breakfast on a regular morning in a regular cottage. He wants to return that normal life to him. Tie him back to earth.

The idea that lands in his brain at that moment is exceedingly stupid.

But—it could _work,_ is the thing. For keeping Martin here, with the added bonus of keeping Jon stable as well. A fixed point in their otherwise chaotic existence. As the other man rejoins him at the table Jon starts to speak.

“I have a proposition.”

Martin raises his eyebrows amusedly, lifting his mug to his lips. “Do tell.”

"What if we—" he pauses before he can say anything else. The adrenaline he’d built up drains out of him like someone’s pulled a plug in his nervous system. He’s abruptly reminded how strange this idea is, doubt growing with each second he stays silent. Martin keeps staring at him.

"...What?" Martin asks, concern creeping into his gaze. He’s folding the little paper square on his tea bag.

"What if we got married?"

There’s a moment after he spits the words out that is so still and terrifying that Jon can’t find the strength to move a muscle. Martin is still staring directly at him, eyebrows shot up with surprise. He shakes his head as if to clear it, then laughs. “Wow. Um, ha ha? I’m...sorry, can I ask where the joke is going?”

“I’m not joking?”

“Oh! Oh. Oh my God? Jon, what—”

"No, listen! Listen. This is about, a-about the anchors.” Martin stops talking, and gestures for him to continue.

"Okay. Well, um. I was thinking about your—your whole situation. With the Lonely. You keep getting pulled back in, right? So...so then, I was thinking about what I did with my rib, with the coffin, although that was also because of the tape recorders—” 

Martin looks away briefly, seeming lost in a memory. _He put those there,_ Jon remembers. _He did that for me._ His voice falters for a moment as he tries to continue. “—Anyway, I was thinking about anchors.” He pauses again as Martin turns back to meet his gaze, now with soft eyes watching him. He bites back the urge to behold what he’s thinking. Quells it enough to only get the barest idea of his emotions; curiosity and an undercut of nervousness—feelings fluttering like a bird trapped in a house, wings beating against the windows. The Lonely still suffocates his thoughts like thick humidity. Jon takes a deep breath and continues.

“Anchors, yeah. I realized, you know, marriage—it’s a bit like anchoring yourself to someone? Bound together for life, and all that. And the rings, you know—they'd help too, as a physical object, but the main idea is—I think anchors work better with another person. I-It wouldn’t be romantic! Just...an attempt at tying us both back down a bit." He's staring at his hands, picking at a bit of dry skin by the nail of his thumb. He can't bear to look at Martin. "Sorry there's no one better around to tie yourself to." He manages with a weak laugh.

"Alright, first of all, stop that," Martin responds, reaching across the table to grab Jon's hands and pulling them apart, stopping his frantic movement. "You'll make them bleed. And second of all..." he trails off, staring at where his hands are still wrapped around Jon's. He pulls his away with an intake of breath, and Jon feels his heart drop a little bit. But Martin looks back up and smiles. "Honestly, with the way all of this fear nonsense operates, that just might be dumb enough to work.”

Jon wants to protest his assertion that his idea is _dumb_ , but he sees Martin glance down at his own hands, senses a glimmer of hope through the anxiety he can see in his brain, and keeps his mouth shut. He’ll do anything to see Martin hopeful again.

There’s a moment of silence, or near silence, only the creaking radiator and the birds outside offering any auditory company. _Fiancé,_ his mind supplies simply, and a single word is apparently enough to force up a wave of emotion. He squeezes his eyes closed against the rush of _something_ in his chest.

“What now?” Martin asks, over the table, over the radiator and the birds and the rays of the sun.

“What now.” Jon drums his fingers on the table. “Well, I don’t actually know how to get married.”

Martin laughs at that. “No secret ex-spouse?” He jokes, but it sounds stilted.

“There is none, in fact,” Jon mutters. “We’ll need rings.”

“And we have to wait a day for the license to go through.”

“We’ll stay the night somewhere. I don’t think we’re anywhere near a registration office.”

“And we can find a jeweler’s on the way,” Martin adds on. “For the rings.”

“Right,” Jon replies, and then they fall silent. 

“Well!” Martin says, and then laughs in a way that presents cheerfulness just barely masking hysteria. “Glad that’s settled? I’m going to, um. Shower. Need to run to the store later.” He jerks a thumb behind him and is gone the next moment, escaping into the tiny bathroom and leaving Jon alone at the table.

His brain refuses to fully comprehend the reality of the situation. It’s like trying to force a balloon underwater—Martin, by all technicalities, is his fiancé. Martin, who this morning was nothing more than a coworker, is now—

Well. He wasn’t just a coworker, Jon supposes. He can't really deny his feelings for him anymore, not after everything that he'd done for him in the months since he'd woken up. But he doesn't even know if Martin considers him a friend, and he certainly no longer hold any of the romantic feelings for Jon that he'd heard about all that time ago. They were different people now, and if Martin didn't love him anymore, that was fine. It wasn't about Jon, at least not in that way.

 _Anchors,_ he thinks to himself, and finishes his tea.

—

They climb into the truck the next morning, prepared for yet another long drive. Martin has put all of the documents they need in a neat little folder, which he holds with both hands in the passenger seat. Martin starts searching for inns and jewelers as soon as they hit somewhere with phone service.

The previous day had been...odd, to say the least. After their discussion at breakfast the energy in the cabin had been strained. Both of them were trying very hard to pretend like everything was normal and they weren’t about to attempt to fend off a powerfully unknowable fog and a rapidly developing addiction to the emotion of fear with an impromptu elopement.

Now they’re driving south, morning drowsiness not yet shaken off, and Jon finds himself significantly less confident in his plans than he was the day before. What if there isn’t a jewelry shop they can stop in? What if they’re missing a piece of identification? What if Martin reveals that he secretly has had a partner this entire time and feels more loved by them than he ever will by Jon and he actually doesn't need him at all and then he leaves and goes back to London and Jon is—

“Jesus, rings are expensive. Can we get the cheap ones or are you okay with not eating for a month?”

“Cheap ones,” Jon responds, and Martin nods. “They don’t need to be fancy. Just need to be anchors.”

“We should have brought your rib. They could’ve set pieces of it in them—”

“Alright,” Jon says, rolling his eyes at the jab, and Martin smirks.

Daisy’s truck doesn’t have a clock in it. The drive feels like it’s taking ages, and Jon feels coldly like they’re running on borrowed time, like any minute now they could lose momentum and drop the whole thing.

Martin is on his phone in the passenger seat. He’s scrolling in a way that makes it apparent that he’s not paying attention to anything on his screen. "How did you come up with this idea, anyway?" His voice sounds oddly forced.

"Well...you've been fading in and out a lot. I thought with Peter Lukas gone that would be over, or at least easier to deal with, but apparently not. I get scared seeing you like that. I just wanted to help."

"And your first thought was getting hitched?"

"Okay—alright, listen," Jon protests. "When you think about it, it's the ideal scenario for us."

"Husbands?"

" _Mutually linked people,_ " Jon clarifies over the teasing laughter coming from the passenger seat. "Like I said, we'll be tied to each other, not just to some inanimate object. And the rings will help, as well, I assume."

"Lots of assumptions coming from someone whose plan in the fight against undefinable fear gods is to involve the power of joint tax filing."

"Oh, and you have a better suggestion?"

"Therapy?"

"Like we can afford therapy," Jon quips, and Martin snorts. "This is just a crutch for right now. If we ever find a way to fix all of this, and you and I are free from the Forsaken and the Beholding and whatever else and we don't risk becoming monstrous, we can just get divorced."

He knows they're not marrying for love in the first place, but the words still feel rough coming up his throat. Oddly, Martin's mood seems to dim as well. "Right," he mumbles, looking back to his phone.

The rest of the ride to the motel is quiet. Jon watches the passing fields and other small villages, similar to the one they're staying outside of. It wouldn't be a bad place to live, Jon thinks. He'd held some city elitism since moving away to college, but the quiet was relaxing, if not a bit unsettling at night after years of growing accustomed to sleeping with white noise and lights in his window.

He can imagine a life here. Not now, obviously, he can't just run from the Institute and the damage it'd done. But once it's all over, he could see himself moving out of London, having an early retirement among the quiet hills.

He'd want Martin with him, though. Jon could give him a garden. It would be less lonely, with him.

—

Jon doesn't know how to buy rings.

He doesn't know why he _thought_ he would, considering he has no prior knowledge of jewelry, but actually setting foot into the store proved it to be much more challenging than he may have initially assumed. He's also realizing how strange it would be to walk up to the sales clerk and blatantly ask for the cheapest options, so he resorts to standing over a display case, planning his next move and hoping he doesn't look suspicious.

Martin went to the registration office with their documents—apparently, one half of the couple suffices when applying for a marriage license—but it saves them time. They arrived in town later than they wanted and parked the truck at the motel, and neither of them are keen on walking back after dusk in a town they're unfamiliar with.

Martin measured their ring sizes with twine and wrote them in Jon's notes app, which he's looking at now, staring at the two numbers on the screen like they'd unlock the secrets of the universe or at least make him look busy to the girl behind the counter.

"Can I help you?"

 _Fuck._ "Ah, yes. That would be great, actually."

She shows him around, asking lots of questions about metal and engraving and stones.

"Does he—ah, you said he, right?" Jon's heart races for a second, old habits not yet shaken, but he nods. She continues. "Does he have any specific preferences as to what you get?"

She's friendly, peppy in a way that suggests a cheerful disposition outside of a sale as well. Jon likes her. "Not really. Nothing too flashy, probably."

She smiles and leads him to a case, where they look through rings for what feels like hours. Eventually they find something simple, thin gold bands that won't drain the remainder of their Institute paychecks, and as he pays she slips them into little soft pouches.

Jon holds the rings in a fist as he leaves the shop, trying to channel anchoring energy into them, whatever that may be. He starts off in the direction of the motel. The sun is beginning to set behind the thick clouds, giving the town a moody, grey look.

When he checks his phone it's nearly six, so he assumes Martin is back already. He shoots him a quick text to let him know he's on the way, trying and failing not to think too much into it when he gets no response.

When he reaches Martin at the motel his worries are confirmed. He looks out of it, sitting on the bench outside of their room, staring blankly at the concrete beneath him. “You alright?” Jon asks, scanning his face as he holds out the rings. "I got them. Not too expensive. Should work for—"

“Jon, I—” Martin stops. He seems to struggle to find the words. “ _God_ —” He puts his head in his hands, frustration evident in his voice.

“What is it?” Jon fails to force the compulsion out of the question, but it doesn’t matter—he’s pushed back by a wall of Lonely fog so thick he nearly gets stumbles on his feet. Martin is already answering him anyway.

“I was just—I kept thinking, today, as I was filing everything—are you _sure_ about this? I mean, are you sure? I mean, God—I just can't understand why you would do this, it’s—it’s—”

“Stupid?” Jon attempts to be lighthearted, but quickly realizes it's not the time when Martin appears to get more upset.

“ _Yes!_ ” Martin cries, and then falls suddenly silent. They breathe in the silence for a moment, the humidity of the air surrounding them like cling wrap. It's a bit too close to the fog, and he feels alarm begin to rise in his chest. 

Jon moves slowly to sit next to Martin. “Are you okay?” He asks softly.

"Why are you _doing_ this?" Martin says, voice breaking halfway through the sentence. "Pity?" He's shimmering at the edges like a low-quality photograph, rapidly becoming more difficult to discern from the seat. Jon sets a hand on his forearm, panic coursing through his nerves. Martin comes back a bit from the contact. "I'm sorry, I'm here, I'm here. I just—I guess I can't see why you'd do all of this for me. I mean God, Jon, we just applied to get _married, why_ —"

"Because I love you," Jon says, voice loud and raw with emotion. The words are tumbling out of his mouth, heart fluttering like the wings of a fledgling struggling to get off the ground. "I love you, and—and I don't want you to go away."

Everything is quiet for a minute. Martin is looking at him, eyes wide and nervous like he's waiting for a punchline. The air between them feels thin, like the oxygen Jon is breathing in isn’t enough to sustain his lungs. “I’m sorry,” He says, and Martin is still silent. “I should have been clear with you from the beginning. I hope you know you don’t—you don’t have to love me, but I thought if I was tied to you a-and you to me it would keep us both safer, and—”

"Jon," Martin's voice stops him, but he seems to trail off as soon as he starts speaking.

Jon can feel his voice shake as he responds. "What?"

"I...the anchor thing—that will be a huge help, but...getting married. You and me. It could—it could just be...getting married. Like normal. Just because we love each other."

Jon is quiet. Thoughts are rushing through his head too quickly for him to focus on any single one.

Martin's face drops. "Oh, or we could—I mean, we don't have to, obviously. Sorry—"

"You love me?"

“Are you serious?” Martin's voice pitches up in disbelief. “Yes! Yes, I love you, Jon, and I would like to marry you for real. If you'd want that.” A self-conscious laugh escapes him. "God. We haven't even kissed yet."

Jon watches him for a moment. "Do you want to?"

Martin has just barely started nodding when Jon leans in. Tragically, they only last three seconds before Jon has to pull back because Martin's laughing. "Sorry, I'm sorry," he giggles, covering his mouth with his wrist. "I'm just—"

"Just what?" Jon asks, and he can't keep the smile off his face. He lets it sit there, allowing his cheeks to strain with the force of it.

Martin takes a deep breath, and the smile he returns to Jon is enough to make his heart pang. "I'm just—I don't know, relieved? I'm happy," he responds, and that's enough to make Jon kiss him again. Martin grabs his face this time, fingertips rubbing the space behind his ears. When Jon pulls back, he chases him a little, nose bumping against his. "I'm really happy." There's a bright look in his eyes as he touches their foreheads together, solid and here.

 _You’re all I ever wanted._ Jon can’t tell if it’s Martin’s thought or his.

—

They drive to the registration office the next day, and by some small miracle Martin manages to find a space in the tiny parking lot out front. The actual marriage is simple—it's technically an elopement, just documents and signatures, and when they sit back down in the truck it feels strangely like they never left at all, like the before and after points were just folded over and stitched together. The rings sit in between them, shoved into the cupholder beneath the stereo system.

“Do we have to, like...do anything to them? For the, the anchoring to work?” Martin looks very focused. Jon feels an endeared smile creep into his face. “Or does it just...happen?”

“I’m not sure. I’m less of an expert on this than you may think.” Martin rolls his eyes at him, but they both fall silent as Jon finally shakes the rings out of their jewelry pouches. He swallows roughly, aware that his hands are shaking. “Uh—”

“It doesn’t feel real,” Martin says, voice barely above a whisper. He laughs. “You were never even my boyfriend.”

“We did move pretty quickly,” Jon jokes, but his voice tapers off into a hoarse whisper at the end, emotion taking over. They both know they moved slow as a crawl, lives rife with troubles and traumas and so many things trying to keep them apart. Despite everything, he and Martin sit in a truck in a parking lot in the quiet hills of Scotland, together, together, together.

“But we made it here, right?” Martin responds as if answering his thoughts and not his words.

He tries to feel if there’s a difference on the way back up, left to his thoughts as Martin drives them home. Tries to feel if they have a deeper connection now, if they’re linked to each other in a way that’s more than just rings and certificates.

“Do you think it worked?” Jon asks.

Martin hums. “Well, marriage obviously doesn’t mean love, all the time. And love is what beats the Lonely, all that. But I think—” He cuts himself off with a laugh. “When you suggested we get married to be _tied_ _to_ each other, I thought—”

“That is just regular marriage, isn’t it?” Jon mutters, exasperated with himself. He presses his eyes into his hand.

“Hey,” Martin says, and his voice is soft. "Your heart was in the right place. It's all worked out now, yeah?"

Jon wants to hold his hand. “Is this a stick shift?”

Martin laughs. “What? Didn’t you drive this?”

“Okay, I don’t want to hear it from you,” Jon responds. Martin laughs again. “Do you need your other hand, or can I hold it?”

“Oh,” Martin says, quieting. “Oh.” Jon looks at him behind the wheel, periodically lit in flashes of yellow as they pass by street lamps. “Well, uh, ten and two,” He whispers, and then huffs a nervous little laugh. “No, uh, yeah. Yeah, you can hold my hand.” He awkwardly places his left-hand palm up on the center console, flexing his fingers minutely. Jon takes a moment to look at the band around his ring finger, still unworn and unfamiliar. He interlocks their fingers and squeezes.

They stay like that, at once too afraid to move and not wanting to let go. Halfway through the drive Jon feels exhaustion settle in. It's raining today, which they could have predicted from the grey skies last night, and he's lulled by the white noise of water hitting the windshield. His is head is leaning heavily on his palm as he tries to prop himself up.

“Sleep,” Martin urges from behind the wheel.

“‘M not tired,” Jon protests, and shifts slightly more upwards as if to prove his point.

“Sure,” Martin responds, amused. “I’ll wake you up when we get home.”

The road back is long, and he can feel his thoughts going hazy as he watches the lights on the road blur. The tail lights of the cars in front of them flash red against the wet pavement.

For now, Jon will fall asleep in the passenger seat and wake up back at the safehouse, and he will put on sweatpants and brush his teeth and lie down to fall back asleep on the horrible pull-out couch, and Martin will be there to fall asleep too. And tomorrow morning when he makes eggs Martin will be there to make tea. And when everything becomes too much, as it does sometimes, Martin will be there, because he loves him and he is his anchor, and his husband, and isn’t that something? Martin loves him.

Life stretches out in front of them, barreling ever forwards, and Jon loves Martin too.

**Author's Note:**

> martin getting yanked out of the physical manifestation of loneliness and immediately being proposed to by the guy he's had an assumedly unrequited crush on for three years: fuck it we ball
> 
> hilarious that i literally started writing this in november and didn’t finish it until today 🥴 took a quarantine to complete it and i'm still not a huge fan of how it turned out but here we are! my hail mary before season 5! just squeezing the last tiniest bit of scottish cottage toothpaste out of the tube before rq takes everything from me...are y’all ready because i am not
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/oniamot)  
> [tumblr](https://sixpiecechickenmcnobody.tumblr.com)


End file.
